"Don't you have better things to do?" her friend Jennifer asked her. "Meet someone new online. There is no lack of choices out there," she licked her lips when she said that.
Daniel was her first love. No man could replace him. If Vanessa wanted to find out what went wrong in her life in the past fifteen years that led her to this very point, she had to start with Daniel.
It was odd though, to realize that she had no way of contacting him at all. Her Facebook messages to him had been unanswered. His phone number now belonged to someone else. Not that she had tried to call him. No, she was not that forward. She saved the 412 number on her phone and see what Whatsapp spewed out. The profile of the person in possession of the number was now an American woman. Of course, what did she expect, Vanessa thought to herself. Why would a German exchange student keep an American phone number for fifteen years after he graduated, in a country where the woman he had so easily, casually, left behind live?
"Don't you have his German phone number?"
Vanessa shook her head and sucked in a deep breath, cursing herself for her foolishness.
She had it somewhere, just not retrievable anymore. It was probably saved in one of her old Nokia or Sony phones. Those chunky things from the past that break down and you just put them away because unlike the phones nowadays, there wasn't that much stuff on them. You couldn't even take pictures with them. Vanessa had rummaged through her drawer full of old electronics and most of them broken beyond repair. Those that could be charged and turned on were from a time post-Daniel, and did not have what she was looking for.
"I do have his email address, from school," Vanessa said, trying hard not to break the white foam on top of her cappuccino as she sipped.
"Ah, then email him."
"What if he replies back?"
"Isn't that what you want?" Jennifer snorted. She crossed her legs and leaned back in annoyance.
Conversations between the best friends often felt like a waste of time. But that was what friends are for, to listen to all the time-wasting circular logic of each other, and be there when the other person eventually talks herself out of it.
"Our university email needs registration in order to be claimed for life. What if it's the same over there in Germany and he didn't claim it? And now someone else has it, and he or she would read my email instead? That would be so embarrassing!"
"Are there that many people with the same first and last name in the same university?"
"It's not an uncommon first and last name combination over there."
"You can find out for real when you do email him," Jennifer suggested, squeezing her impatient lips together. She wanted to read, so she pulled out a book, but it continued to rest on her lap because she did not want to be so completely rude to Vanessa, although it was hard to fight the impulse to do so. "Besides, what embarrassing message are you going to write? First email is probably going to be brief anyway...I hope?" she eyed her friend suspiciously.
Vanessa nodded. "Yes, of course." She was not going to pour her heart out on the first email to him after fifteen years. But the horror dawned on her that she hadn't actually thought through what she would actually tell him.
Do I just say hi? And why would I just say hi after all these years? Do I tell him I have gotten a divorce and I miss him? But why on earth would I miss someone I haven't seen for so long who lives across the ocean? He would think I am a psycho, or worse, a desperate woman, and ignore me, even if he still holds the email account...
Vanessa's toxic thoughts went on a negative spiral. She was only brought out of the internal panic when her friend slammed a book on the coffee table between them.
"Read this," Jennifer said. "You need it."
Vanessa eyed the cover. The title said You Are a Badass : How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life By Jen Sincero.
The book title tugged at something in her.
It's not the book. Not this book. It was a book, a book with the word 'bad' on the cover, which was mostly red and black. She wanted to say that it was a book that had a seductive woman on it, just like Uma Thurman's poster for Pulp Fiction, but it was not that. It was a German fiction, something intellectual enough that a studious boy from Germany would bring even to America during his exchange year to keep him companied.
She remembered it now.
On one of their first dates, Daniel suddenly left the chairs or sofas they were chatting on and went to read this book — it was either called 'The Bad Girl' or 'The Bad Woman' in German, and she remembered this much because he had translated it for her — on the bed. It was in the middle of his relatively large room inside a shared studio with the other European students. He lay on his belly and raised the book in front of him, but he was not really reading the book. He just wanted me to see him reading it, on the bed.
Vanessa remembered the moment she realized that this was it, that this was the moment that they would cross the boundary between two fellow students who had nothing in common and turned into lovers. Lovers who would know intimate details of each other's bodies. Lovers who would spend days on end on this bed, not necessarily making love, but just to lie there next to each other, in each other's warm and reassuring company.
She remembered wanting so very much at that moment when she stared at him, bewildered at the insinuation of his simple action of moving over to the bed to read that particular book, that she wanted nothing more but to turn from a prude girl who never had a boyfriend and never went on a proper date before, to the 'bad girl' that was described on the pages of his book.
"I have never read that book," Vanessa mumbled. Suddenly realizing her mistake.
Jennifer frowned at her friend. She was not surprised, just confused, for Vanessa appeared to be close to tears. "Which book?"
"Some other book," Vanessa said, bolted up and started wearing her overcoat. "Sorry, I've got to go! I forgot to turn off the stove!" She made up a plausible excuse for her behavior.
Jennifer raised her eyebrows and did not say anything. Everyone knew that the apartments in this area only have electric stoves equipped with overheat circuit breakers.
